Thousands of youth remember Holocaust at Auschwitz

WARSAW, Poland – Thousands of youth from Israel, the United States and other countries marched Thursday between Auschwitz and Birkenau, the two parts of Nazi Germany's most notorious death complex, to honor the millions killed in the Holocaust.

Also Thursday, Polish officials and members of the Jewish community gathered in Warsaw to mark the 69th anniversary of the start of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the doomed revolt that a group of Jews waged against the Nazis in 1943.

An estimated 10,000 young people, some carrying Israeli flags or wearing them draped around their shoulders, took part in the March of the Living in Oswiecim, a town in southern Poland where the Germans operated Auschwitz during World War II.

The event, which takes place every year on Holocaust Remembrance Day, involves a walk of two miles (three kilometers) from Auschwitz to Birkenau, where Hitler's men executed Jews, Roma and others in huge numbers in gas chambers.

The participants were joined by a handful of Holocaust survivors and American military veterans who helped liberate several other death camps at the end of World War II.

Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated by Soviet troops in January 1945, in the closing months of the war as Germany faced defeat.